Resting human T cells bind sheep erythrocytes via a T cell specific 50kD cell surface protein called CD2 (Bach, J. F., et al., Transplantation 8:265-280 (1969); Howard, F. D., et al., J. Immunol. 126:2117-2122 (1981)). This phenomenon has long had practical utility, but, until recently, little known physiological significance. However, parallel studies of the interaction between T cells and sheep erythrocytes (Hunig, T., J. Exp. Med. 162:890-901 (1985); Hunig, T. R., J. Immunol. 136:2103-2108 (1986)), and T cells and their physiological targets (Shaw, S., et al., Nature 323:262-264 (1986)), have led to the identification of a specific molecular ligand for CD2 which is a widely distributed surface protein called, in the human case, LFA-3. CD2/LFA-3 interactions mediate cytolytic target conjugation (Shaw, S., et al., Nature 323:262-264 (1986)), thymocyte-epithelial adhesion (Vollger, et al., (1987)), and the mixed lymphocyte reaction (Martin, P. J., et al., J. Immunol. 131:180-185 (1983)). In addition, a broader role for the CD2 antigen has been suggested by the discovery that certain combinations of anti-CD2-monoclonal antibodies can directly activate mature T cells via an antigen-independent pathway.
An understanding of the molecular interaction between CD2 and LFA-3 or anti-CD2 antibodies would be useful in correlating physiological function with structure. This type of information is useful in designing compounds that can mediate killer T cell or other immune response mechanisms. At present, the most common method for mapping protein epitopes requires the synthesis of an array of short synthetic peptides spanning the protein sequence, and the use of these peptides in multiple binding assays (Geysen, H. M., et al., Science 235:1184-1190 1987)). In order to identify specific residues important for antibody binding, variants of the peptide are synthesized with substitutions at each position. The synthetic peptide strategy has several limitations. If the antibody derives its affinity from interaction with disparate portions of the polypeptide backbone or with a novel conformation of the backbone, the peptide will be unable to mimic the entire protein in binding to the antibody. In order to identify individual residues contacted by the antibody, an extremely large number of peptide variants must be synthesized. The most exhaustive study to date involved the assay of over 1500 individual peptides (Getzoff, E. D., et al., Science 235:1191-1196 (1987)).
Monoclonal antibodies have been used to select against viral envelope determinants (Yewdell, J. W., and Gerhard, W., Ann. Rev. Microbiol. 35:185-206 (1981)). Such selections are both less convenient and less sensitive than desired for the determination of epitope loss mutants because the mutational alterations must be extracted from the viral genome, and mutations leading to viral inviability cannot be detected.
Thus, an efficient method for mapping epitopes or binding domains by identification of epitope or binding domain loss mutants is needed. Such method should utilize an expression host whose viability is not impaired by the introduced mutations. Additionally, the method should permit simple extraction of mutant sequences from the expression host. Further, the method should provide for rapid production, expression and screening of a large number of mutant sequences.